ShockMeSane

I realize your intentions are good, but there is no human way to balance a game of even this scale in a week with less than 5 testers Misten's original was actually fairly well balanced for space combat, though I would say the Empire probably had an upper hand once the limitless fighter spawns came in (if you played with the right tactic, which was just maxing out on Victories, standing back and beating people to hell with 16 TIE-Fighter squadrons). Anyways, I don't even care about the ground combat, just auto-resolve it when I can even be bothered to play GC, which is totally pointless because no matter how much it cheats, its so easy to defeat massive enemy fleets with a tiny force taking no casualties that it isnt even funny Best of luck to you though.

Yea, unfortunately 3 Tartans can take out an almost limitless amount of Fighters if they maximize firepower. You can definitely take out a hanger with your Y-Wings before they are all destroyed, but against a human player, you'd have to have more than 5 Squads of Y-Wings to take out a 2nd.

I've often wondered how the game would play if Fighters didn't cost population. I think I'll try it out, might actually use fighters then

Oh, and Necro, in response to a few of your points. I don't think Misten really messed with the health of the Marauder/Broadside, so they are quite fragile, especially for their cost in Skirmish. They are quite awesome at taking out fighters or damaging the Starbase if they get off a good barrage, but a Calamari/ISD can literally destroy one in 2 volleys, which is about 6 seconds, and from a considerable distance. And the Proton Torpedoes on the X-Wings are largely cosmetic. They do increase their damage output, but they do not penetrate shields or deal nearly the amount of damage that Y-Wing/TIE Bomber Torpedoes do. Just FYI, and the same goes for TIE Bombers and A-Wings concussion missles.

Just to mess around, I tripled the (game default) health on all ship hardpoints, lowered the accuracy a bit against Corvettes on the big guns (but not near as inaccurate as they originally were) and bumped their health a bit, and I found I really liked the result. Tripling from all bases (though I didn't triple Vets, they only got like an additional 150 shields/hull). I had to raise fighter damage and health a bit to keep them useful, but overall I really liked the feel of it. I also raised the pop. cap to 33 empire/40 rebellion, which was interesting, though I'm not sure how much that number actually needed adjusting in the first place! A change (that I made for testing) I definitely didn't like was increasing the shield recharge rate to 1.5 sec from 3. I messed around with the number, and felt like 2.5-3 is probably the most "realistic" feeling. I actually notice the Ion Cannons doing what you mentioned now, and am glad they aren't totally worthless . I think one change that definitely needs to go into your next version is to increase Starbase hardpoint health to reflect how much more powerful capital ships are. Me and a buddy tried it out at 900 per standard hardpoint and 1800 on the shield generator, and found that made a level 5 starbase fairly epic, but still destructable fairly quickly by 3 Capital Ships if left undefended. The last change that you might consider that I made and really, really liked, was increasing the speed of units across the board. Not a huge amount, but I think I set A-Wings as the fastest unit at about 5.4, and scaled it from there with X-Wings and TIE Fighters being equal in speed sheerly for balance issues (X-Wings still outrun them vastly with foils locked). The most important speed changes were to the larger ships. I personally freaking hate how slow and unmanueverable they are, so I basically just increased their speed AND manueverability by .4 across the board. Lastly, in line with trying to make Corvettes not suck again, and in light of the movement speed increases, I changed the Vets back to their original speed. Anyways we are having a great time playing it this way. I can see how some people might prefer the Capital Ships to be huge lumbering giants that can barely turn, but with all the pathing issues they have, we decided that they simply had to be more maneuverable, because if you have 3 in close proximity to an asteroid field and are trying to manuever around it with base move/manuever speeds... it is a freaking traffic jam nightmare on those Star Destroyers. I'll also say that even with .4 more speed and manueverability, they are still quite a bit slower and less manueverable than any other ship, but it definitely helps with some of those pathing issues.

Misten, I think the issue with the capital ships atm, is that the increase in hull strength does not scale. For example, a Star Destroyers hull was increased to 1000 per hardpoint, from 350, a 286% increase. Whereas Acclamators went from 160 to 250, only 156% increased. Especially considering the larger guns ability to hit smaller ships, I definitely see the issue. Unfortunately, building any ship other than Star Destroyer/Mon Cal is a non-viable option. Their cost either needs to be DRASTICALLY increased, or other ships ought to be brought into line. I know you mentioned increasing their costs already, so I'm mostly typing this for my own benefit Personally, I'd prefer a more happy medium, with the smaller ships-of-the-line getting a bit more of a boost, and the larger ones costing more.

Oh cool, never knew

Just so you know Necro, in the 1.1 realism mod, the ion cannon still disables all ships in one hit. It simply does not disable the space station in one hit unless the shields are at about 50%. It really wasn't much of a change. I've played it quite a bit, and although fun, its pointless on Galactic Conquest vs the AI because Corvettes are a little underpowered in it, and you know how the AI loves to build vetsx1billion. Skirmish multiplayer vs friends is fun though, we just don't use the superweapons.

Yea, other than the obvious graphical and UI issues, Rebellion had one other major flaw going for it. It was just too overwhelming for most of the gaming audience. I remember my friend and I both bought the game, but he wasn't a super-hardcore strategy fan. I still remember him telling me how he quit the game when a rebel fleet came to one of his undefended planets, bombarded all the life off of it, and proceeded to invade it with 1 unit. Well, for some reason (even though using the Death Star made you less popular galaxy-wide), bombing all installations and units off of a planet was actually an inspiritation to the rest of a sector in that game, and he ended up having like 2 planets going into revolt and another flat out changing sides. He quit and never played again, and who could blame him. The game was a little too unforgiving to the new-comer, even on easy. I went on to play it quite a bit, but its still a far cry from being as good as even Master of Orion 2 in my book I do agree that a with Darth that his recipe would be one for huge success, if only someone would do it!

Changing hyperspace speeds is highly relative, unfortunately. The only time I'd want them slower is in multiplayer, and even then, not much slower. I totally forgot about the Acclamator nose thing, meant to bring it up, glad someone else noticed. After further testing, I came up with a list of observations/suggestions. It is your mod, so I won't take it personally if you completely blow all this off. 1) I think you will either need to lower the cost, population value, or slightly increase the health of Corvettes. They just aren't worth building right now. They die way too fast if your opponent has 3 or more VSDs/Assault Frigates. My personal reccomendation would be to slightly increase the inaccuracy of the large weapons against them to a more moderate value, though there are many ways you could handle it. They were certainly too difficult for large ships to hit in the release version, but I feel they are just a little TOO frail, now. 2) Assault Frigates and VSDs feel too weak in comparison to ISDs and MCs now. I realize you probably did a static increase accross the board, but Assault Frigates and VSDs go down very, very quickly compared to their larger counterparts. I would either increase the costs of the two capital ships (on campaign as well, if you don't mind), OR slightly (maybe 10% each), increase their hull and shields. 3) This is a kind of off the wall suggestion, but it has to do with Ion Cannons. The ship mounted ones, that is. Right now, I feel like they just don't have much of a place in the game. They are easily the least important hardpoints on any ship, and I feel the Assault Frigate is nicely boosted by not having any. I'm not sure if its possible, but if you could increase the damage they do to shields, and slightly decrease the amount turbolasers do (not by much), AND upped shield regeneration considerably accross the board, I think the gameplay might be a bit more interesting. As it is now, a Nebulon-B can keep a Star Destroyers shields from ever regenerating with its 1 Turbolaser and 2 regular lasers. I think a small shield strength boost, coupled with a 25-30% shield regeneration boost (For all ships Frigate+) might make Ion Cannons significantly more desireable. Because they cannot disable things as they are meant to, all they do is damage shields, which collapse in most cases with 10 seconds of concentrated assault even on a capital ship. If you ever do something about land battles, which I agree are not a priority, you might want to consider either making the Turbolaser Batteries significantly harder to kill, or making them way less expensive (or both). As it stands, under no circumstance will they repel 4k worth of units, and the entire idea behind static defenses in strategy games is that they are a financially sound investment as long as someone actually attacks them. However, right now they have 3 problems. 1: A turbolaser battery is destroyed by one group of the large alliance tanks, a what, 500 investment or something? Destroying only 1-2 individual units before it is destroyed. 2: You can easily find the power generator, and on most maps are able to destroy it without ever engaging the turbolaser batteries, thus completely circumventing 4k worth of enemy expenditure. 3: Their cost is retarded. You could have a Star Destroyer or a Turbolaser Battery. In no circumstance whatsoever is the latter EVER a wise investment, especially considering that it takes up a valuable build slot on the planets surface. Anyways, just my thoughts. The main issue I see with the mod right now is that assuming a 20 population cap, 5 Star Destroyers is always your best bet of a fleet. Great job so far, keep up the good work!

Tried it out, really like it Misten. If I could make a suggestion for skirmish.... if there is any way you could disable the option to make Interdictors, that would be great. I don't see being able to play this mod with too many people outside of my group of friends, but when I play against the computer, I get annoyed to death that it builds Interdictors instead of Victories, and loses every time because of it. Its sad that you can easily beat 2v1 against the Empire just because of this. Also, if there is any way you could increase the cooldown on Hypervelocity and Ion Cannon for Campaign mode, that would be freaking great. The Ion Cannon practically assures that any fleet without the Death Star in it is doomed to fail with its firing every 10 seconds and effectively destroying a Star Destroyer per shot. Lastly, you might want to do something about Luke's Lucky Shot. It will one shot your shield generator, and 1 hardpoint every 60 seconds or so thereafter, and on certain maps with nebulas near the starbase, there is basically nothing you can do about this. So far, very nice. I'd wait about adding in new units until some new models show up, though, as otherwise it'll just look too lame imo I'll play some more with it and see if I have anymore thoughts.

If you can build a Star Destroyer or Mon Calamari Cruiser on any planet other than Fondor, Sullust, Kuat, or Mon Calamari, with any less than a level 4 Starbase, you are playing a modded game. Perhaps you should play the game before making blatantly incorrect statements about it.

Your best bet would be to form your own game company and acquire the liscensing from Lucasarts. I do wish the Galactic Map had a little more depth ala Rome: Total War, but its basically just an RTS that drags on for a really long. Sadly, you win the game after one major successful space battle. It's too bad, because I agree with you 100%. Rebellion was aimed at a very hardcore strategy audience, and it suffered terribly sales-wise because of it. It actually was close to being a good game, if the combat had actually been involving, fun, or non-grotesque to look at, it might have fared better. I would have loved the strategic overview had been the more important focus, but the way the game stands now, you win after the first major fleet victory, and the game just drags on for hours as a cleanup action after that. The only way the AI even attempts to make it interesting is by throwing up free Calamari Cruisers and Star Destroyers over their planets instantly roughly 30 seconds after the system is empty if you fail to take the planet and withdraw for some reason. Fortunately for the player, these are surmountable odds because I can't tell you the amount of battles that have ended like this for me: Your losses: 2x Tartan Cruiser Enemy losses: 16x Corellian Corvette 8x X-Wing Squadron 12x Y-Wing Squadron 5x A-Wing Squadron 8x Maraudor Cruiser 4x Nebulon B Frigate 2x Assault Frigates Luke Skywalker Admiral Ackbar Han Solo Antilles Dude I don't even know how the AI manages to pull off stuff like that. Its AMAZING.

Sounds interesting. The link isnt working though, so kinda hard to try it

Hey, tried it out. Corvettes seem a bit weaker against fighters, though they still rock them hard. Overall, fighters may have seemed even more worthless because capital ships were taking them out as well. Missle Frigates seemed harder to kill in general, which I didn't like at all. If you can't stop their bombardment in a timely fashion, 3 of them can kill a level 5 Starbase in about 40 seconds, so making them more difficult to destroy seems like a really questionable decision. Corvettes also don't seem any easier to kill by capital ships. Perhaps this was intentional. The Rebellion seems to have a much easier time destroying Tartans the the Empire does of destroying Corellians, though perhaps this was, again, an intentional design choice by the Devs. Other than the missle frigate issue, I had a good time with it when I could actually engage in battles. The hyperspeed is just too painful for me. I find the games default hyperspeed well suited as compared to buildtimes and the overall pacing of the game. Moving the Death Star with this mod made me pick up a book. In between every battle, every enemy hero would respawn before I could reach the next planet. I'd seriously reconsider this. Lastly, you may want to consider giving ships with shield generators increased shield regeneration to compensate for the increased power of Ion Cannons. It would A) Give Ions more to do, and B) Make targetting the shield generator more meaningful. I generally only ever target shield generators on the first capital ship of the fleet i engage, as after that the random attrition on the other enemy capital ships has lowered their shield strength to the point where it would be more beneficial to just knock out their turbolasers. Anyways, some good ideas man, I just don't think you ought to include a hyperspeed change in a Weapons Mod.

Assault Frigates are a bit cheaper than VSDs. In general though,they are only weaker by nature of not having fighters. Assault Frigates have significantly more firepower than Nebulon-Bs, which only have 1 Turbolaser. Assault Frigates are basically necessary against VSDs and Level 3+ Starbases until you get Mon Cals. Even then, you will be producing Mon Cals from a small number of worlds, so Assault Frigates are not completely worthless. I actually kind of like the ships, their shield boost makes them fairly difficult to kill if you time it well.

Well, the Pop Cap is very easy to modify, so if that is an issue to you, I'm sure there will be a mod out within a week that does that. However, consider the actual reason the pop. cap is there. Although lessening the stress on your system is certainly one reason, there is another more important reason. Balance. Starbases have been balanced around the unit cap. They are meant to be as powerful as they are, based on the current population cap. If you raised the population cap to say, 30, Starbases would have noticeably less impact on a battle. A level 5 Starbase is meant to be very powerful, considering the cost, and they are. If you are going to raise the population cap you will also have to increase the strength of Starbases proportionatly to maintain their importance in the game. Alternatively, you could simply lower the cost of producing them, as currently they are very expensive. However, if you could field 7 Star Destroyers at once, you could destroy a level 5 Starbase far more easily than they are supposed to be destroyed. As the game was designed, a level 5 Starbase sitting behind your forces is massive advantage, considering it does not count towards your pop. cap and has 3 Proton Torpedo launchers, a large array of turbolasers/ions, and spawns in 10 population worth of recurring Corvettes/Frigates, and fighters/bombers as well. If I were to make some changes: 1) Reduce the strength of Corvettes vs Fighters. They are meant to be anti-fighter, I realize, but right now, 4 Corvettes can stop a virtually unlimited number of Fighters. The other option is to simply make Corvettes easier to kill. Frigates, which are supposed to be the counter to Corvettes, still take quite awhile to destroy a Corvette, especially in comparison with how long it takes a Corvette to destroy a huge number of fighters. You could accomplish this by either lowering the overall hull/shields of Corvettes or by increasing the accuracy of turbolasers against them. I'd also prefer to see a little more fighter vs fighter action in the game, but as it stands, Corvettes are so devastating against fighters that using anything else against them is senseless. 2) More ships. Honestly, right now the Fighter/Corvette/Frigate1/Frigate2/ArtilleryFrigate/Battleship progression is lacking. I'd prefer a Destroyer and Dreadnaught, and possibly Command (although the Dreadnaught could fulfill this role) and Carrier class to be added, at the very least. 3) Unit experience. I realize this is not something you can do with mods, but it would go a long way towards making the game cooler.

Honestly, this was the point I switched to Galactic Conquest mode. After playing the game a bit more, I'm assuming you are supposed to conquer all the planets up to the one you are supposed to go to. It seems a bit silly that the game has nothing to say about this, though.

Star Destroyers do indeed have a limit, something like 12 squads of TIEs all together. They do not reproduce them no matter how long the battle goes, unless I totally missed it. AT-ATs DO have an infinite number of troops in them, but only 2 squads can be out at once. Try it. Drop 2 squads, run them into the enemy base. You will be able to produce another 2 squads, I promise you, as I've done it many times. Also, I've been playing the last few games on hard. The AI is not any better as far as I can tell, they simply do ridiculous cheats. For example, I had just moved to take Fondor from the Empire, and had defeated the two Stardestroyers (haha... it had a level 2 Starbase, and it was their only planet that could produce Star Destroyers. Hilarious that the AI apparently doesnt have any build restrictions there) there, along with a sizeable garrison of those annoying missle ships that are only good vs Starbases that the computer is so fond of. The Accuser along with about 3 VSDs, 4 Acclamators and a complement of Tartans and Missle Frigates attacked me at Dagobah, a system that can only support a level 2 Starbase which was annihilated despite the contingent of several Assault Frigates and Corvettes I had garrisoned there. Since this left my shipyards at Bespin, at the time my primary Shipyard, open to attack, I had to withdraw from Fondor before I could capture it to deal with the Accuser. Well as you can guess, I sent the Accuser fleeing with Ackbar and gang, and upon my return to Fondor.... the EXACT SAME GARRISON. Two star destroyers, etc. Later in the game I encountered Star Destroyers in parts of the galaxy it was simply not possible for them to be at, the Empire had lacked a major shipyard and those planets had been cut off for a long, long time. If those Star Destroyers had been there at the start, the Empire should have just crushed me in the first 3 days. You know, it wouldnt have annoyed me if the Starbase and entire massive garrison hadn't instantly replaced itself. Of course I only lost 1 Correlian Missle Frigate assaulting the 2 star destroyers +star base, because the computer is dumb. I eventually tired of fighting endless waves of mystically appearing Star Destroyers and made a dash for the Emperor. My population had to be constantly capped so I could defend myself and keep up the attack on one front. On any difficulty except hard, my population has basically never hit cap. This is fine, because it keeps you busy and cautious, but I really loathe when people use ridiculous cheating to compensate for a generally lacking artificial intelligence. Naturally, the Emperor was defended only by a level 4 starbase and some tartans and missle cruisers, although every other planet had an auto-garrison of 2 Star Destroyers at least. I have no idea how on earth that works out. Perhaps their cheating hyperspace Star Destroyer summoning portal doesnt work in the Core Worlds. I practically thought I was up against the Star Forge from KOTOR for a minute

Well, neither of those are AI issues And if you actually read closely, you will see Tarkin makes research FACILITIES 25% cheaper, which he does. He does not make research ITSELF cheaper, so its a pretty pointless bonus. He is incredibly powerful in command of a fleet you are confident will not have to retreat, however. Mara Jade must only show up in the Imperial Campaign because yea, you don't get her in Galactic Conquest.

Yep, auto-resolve is totally ridiculous unless you abuse it. Im fairly certain the AI builds fleets on the basis of auto-resolve calcs, because Corvettes are completely worthless except against fighters, but can somehow wtfpwn Star Destroyers/VSDs in auto-resolve.

If you've played the game at all, you know about the auto-resolve. I find the land battles terribly tedious, but all you need to auto-resolve your way to a land-battle victory is a huge stack of stormtroopers/AT-STs or Rebeltroops/SnowSpeeders. You'll lose some of course, but if you hate the land battles like me, that is your best option of beating the game on hard and not ever seeing a surface battle. I once auto-resolved a late-game battle vs space pirates. They had: 3 pirate frigates, 1 level 2 starbase, and 2 SPCs. I had, 4 Star Destroyers, 3 VSDs, 8 Tartans. I won, but managed to somehow lose 2 Star Destroyers, a VSD, and 3 Tartans. You can imagine the eye rolling that ensued. Fortunately it was at the point in the game where it doesnt matter anymore (generally after you take a 2nd planet from the enemy, sadly). The AI doesnt know how to retreat, or how to protect its leader on levels where killing the Emperor or Mon Mothma is a victory condition. I set the game to hard on one of the 20 system levels, and killed the emperor within 25 days by simply blitzing Coruscant. Also, if you auto-resolve the battle against the Emperor, you seem to automatically win and take no unit losses, even if he is ridiculously defended by AT-ATs and other heroes and all you have sent against him are plex troops/rebel soldiers. I literally sat in orbit for 3 days over Coruscant, seeing if the AI would go... "OH NOES HE IS GOING TO KILL TEH EMPEROR!!!111", but, the AI just acted like it didnt even matter, leaving a fleet with the Accuser and 3 VSDs sitting at Kuat, glaring at my defensive fleet on Kessel with an angry glint in their eye. I mean personally if the AI had a fleet in Orbit over Fondor, where I had Mon Mothma cheapifying Calamari Cruisers for me, I would have immediatly withdrawn all my other fleets without regard to the consequence. The sad thing is, I was sitting at a system within striking range of Coruscant for at least 3 days preparing for my final assault, with 3PO spying on their defenses for me, and the AI made no move whatsoever to put a massive defensive fleet into orbit to protect the Emperor. This game would be about 4x more fun if the enemy actually recognized a losing battle and fled from it BEFORE losing 95% of its forces. Generally the only things that ever escape are Missle Cruisers hiding on the other side of the map. It would also be more fun if it pretended to have any clue that it should protect the Emperor. I've never actually let the Empire construct the Death Star when I played as the Rebellion, but I can only imagine that if they did, they would put it with a VSD, an Acclamator, and 19 Tartans (yes, this is the AIs idea of fleet, which is why building fighters is totally pointless against it), and then sit around looking for a weak point in my defenses until I blew it to oblivian and ended the game. The other thing is, as I'm sure most of you have noticed, is that the AI will seemingly auto-produce ships with apparently no cost involved. They can be down to one system, but if you leave them there for 15 days, they will produce 30 corvettes, 20 fighter squadrons, 10 missle frigates, and an assortment of frigates/destroyers. My first game, the enemy was apparently able to construct Star Destroyers without a Star Destroyer producing system, or in fact, any starbase above level 2. Now, I don't mind the AI cheating a little on the hard difficult level to make up for it not being able to be as smart as a human, but that level of cheating is just obnoxious. A little more work on the AI would have made it totally unneccessary. And lastly, the only major AI point remaining to be made is its fleet composition. The AI simply has no clue what constitutes a good fleet. It will build 5 Tartans/Corvettes for every larger ship in the fleet. And oh god, the Missle Cruisers. I can safely say the AI must be set to build, fleet composition wise: 40% corvettes, 20% missle cruisers, 10% fighters (if rebels, otherwise, 50% corvettes for Empire), 10% Frigates, and 10% Destroyer/Battlecruiser. Its so fun when the enemies "Uber fleet" on day 40 is the Accuser, 25 Tartans, 10 Missle Boat things, and one Acclamator and VSD. When you have 3 mon cals, Home One, 4 corvettes, and 2 Assault Frigates. They don't even stand a chance because they blow their money on huge amounts of craft that are really only necessary in small numbers. Once I reach a certain point in the game, production stops for everything except Star Destroyers/Mon Cals, but apparently the AI does not feel this is necessary. Hopefully, one day the AI will not feel the necessity to build literally billions of the anti-fighter corvettes, and I will actually be bothered to build fighters against it. As it stands right now, 4 corvettes already blow the heck out of an almost unlimited number of fighters. They really need to not be as strong as they are right now. They are a particular problem for the Empire, as the Acclamator is really the best suited ship to destroy them, but is completely worthless outside of that role. Anyone else have any AI gripes?

Yea, there should almost certainly be permanent Hero death in the cases of everyone except Luke and R2-D2. Its so anticlimactic to destroy Home One and then see it back in the next major fleet engagement. The same goes for the Accuser, of course. Also, on medium, the AI has very little clue on how to handle high level starbases. I have defeated some fairly ridiculous fleets with only a level 5 starbase, which although a huge investment in resources, virtually guarentees that the AI will never conquer a system. I would really like to see the AI make higher level Starbases as well. My last game I was the Empire, and as I assaulted their last system, Hoth, i was up against a level 3 Starbase, Home One, an additional Calamari Cruiser, 2 assault frigates, 4 nebulon-bs, TWENTY FIVE corvettes, 8 missle frigates, 5 missle vets, and around 20 squads of every fighter-type. Now, is it just me, or is this a ridiculous amount of fleet to not have at least a level 4 Starbase. Also, the AI always way overbuilds both Tartans and Corvettes, which makes building large amounts of fighters as the Rebels totally fruitless. Just some thoughts.

I just thought I'd mention in response to Calamari Cruisers, yes, you can destroy their shield generators, and quite easily at that. The Death Star putting a few units into battle for free makes a lot of sense, actually. And of course, on a fleet that size you would be tempted to use Tarkin for the +25% fleet strength, though you can't retreat with him on your fleet.

By day 40 you should be at the very least transitioning into Full-time Star Destroyer production, and have quite a number of VSDs, Acclamators and Tartans. If you haven't played many galactic conquest type games before, I can understand the difficulty. Heres a few tips: Recognize your choke points: You will have planets that are invulnerable to attack. Planets have "lanes" (which should be visible, dotted lines, I dont understand why they aren't) between them. You cannot attack Hoth from Coruscant, for example, unless you control basically everything. Once you figure out where the lanes between the planets are, you can immediately vacate all troops from a planet that is not "connected" to a red planet, and concentrate on defending your planets that are. Utilize your planets to the maximum efficiency: Every planet near a red planet should have at least a level 2 starbase to aid with defense. Starbases are huge advantages, and even a level 2 starbase will stave off an attack by a few squadrons of fighters and frigates by itself. Remember, for your planets next to hostile planets, you must keep them well garrisoned if you are fighting the rebels, because of their god-forsaken Raid ability. If you are the Empire, around half your planets should have nothing on the surface except Mines. All the other stuff is just overpriced fluff. On absolutely critical production worlds like Kuat/Fondor/Sullust/MonCal, you might consider a shield generator. On more important worlds though, simply add in a barracks/light/heavy/uber factory. The Factories themselves will help a ton in the defense of the planet, and save you population cap in heavily garrisoning the planet. Use probes!!!: Probes cost next to nothing. Use some of those level 2 starbases that are out of harms way and just queue up loads of probes. They'll show you where the enemy are massing their forces, and where they are weak. This is really, really important because it will alert you to when a ridiculous fleet is building up near a weak point in your defences. If you are playing as the Rebellion, R2D2 is a great, free spy once you have maxed out your tech. Early on, focus on 1 offensive fleet, and smaller defensive fleets to cover your vulnerable planets. An Acclamator and 2 Tartans along with a level 3 starbase on all your outlying chokepoints will FORCE the rebellion to concentrate their forces at one place. If you are using your Probes properly, you will know where they are massing, and be able to appropriately reinforce. As the game progresses, you will have less chokepoints, but each will become more important to protect. However, a level 5 starbase and 2 Tartans and 2 VSDs can stop anything the Rebels can possibly throw at you except MULTIPLE Calamari Cruisers. At the point where they can produce multiple Calamari Cruisers, you will probably be down to 3-4 chokepoint even on a very large mapsize, which makes it very easy to see the attack coming and move a few Star Destroyers to the dangerzone.